


Bukowski

by pinkbagels



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: F/M, Gen, Other, Smallcroft, barfly Harry Watson, mind doodle
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-11
Updated: 2017-01-11
Packaged: 2018-09-16 21:42:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,713
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9290765
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pinkbagels/pseuds/pinkbagels
Summary: Mycroft Holmes has secrets even he doesn't know about.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I'm actually intrigued by Smallcroft, tbh. This weird little mind doodle popped in my head, and I'm sorry, I'm not giving you warnings for this, because if the themes within upset you why would you be reading *anything* on AO3?

**BUKOWSKI**

 

There is a defining depression associated with London rain, for it is not the scrubbed damp one would find in cleaner cities, those sleek urban places not so mired in fathomless history. In London, there is a weight to the water that falls. Every dark drop descends with heavy precision onto the weary traveller's shoulders regardless of the width of the umbrella, the black expanse of its nylon protection only going so far and not taking into account the wind that drives the rain beneath its brim, or the careless angle at which the base is held, thoughts turned too deep inward to care about an off kilter umbrella that leaves its owner vulnerable.

You would not think that Mycroft Holmes would be the sort of person who carried his opened umbrella in such a way, nor would you believe he to be so lost in thought that thick puddles captured his steps, long strides carrying him into sections of London where he knew his security detail wasn't present. Mycroft Holmes did not take long walks, and especially not in this decrepit part of London that was punctuated at intervals by neon coated sex shops sitting garishly alongside broken down pawnbrokers and Ea$yCa$h stores. By the time he'd realized his entire left side was soaked, he had travelled on foot for nearly a mile and no shifting of his umbrella was going to cure the weary ache the damp cold built in his bones. He paused in front of a rusted sign that swung back and forth high above him, affixed with a chain on a small, steel bar jutting out from the concrete above the establishment's door. He glanced up into the downpour to read the sign, the name of the pub barely legible on it. 'DRINK' was printed in dark, rust coloured letters in hand painted scrollwork on what looked to be a sheet of tin. He closed his umbrella, heedless of the relentless rain that beat down on him, and pushed the slender door open, the hinges creaking in much the same manner as the sign as he entered the pub.

The sign was an adequate description for it appeared those who hunkered within this lair of human moles had that distinct, sole purpose in mind, and if Mycroft was given a raised brow by the tall bartender who sported a brush cut and a Nina Hagen t-shirt, it was quickly shrugged off as she gave him a curt nod and silently poured him a whiskey when he gestured to the bottle at her eye level. The offering was given to him in a sweaty tumbler, the whiskey poured over two cloudy ice cubes that floated, tired, within it.

He sat at the bar, dripping, a handkerchief wiping the last of London's rain from his face and hair, though it was thick on his wool coat, which he kept on. His umbrella, fastened back into its usual tight cylinder, was propped against his knee where it leaked a steady stream onto his soaked leg and ruined shoes. The pub had a small fireplace in its centre, but it didn't seem to do a lick of good in eradicating the chill that had buried itself within him. He shivered as he took a sip of whiskey, the warmth it provided too subtle for his current needs.

He'd been a fool, of course, that was where the whole trouble started, and if he cared to examine it he couldn't, for all of his own deductive, logical reasoning, understand why he had made the decision to call her. Mycroft Holmes did not 'fraternize'.

He took another, larger sip of whiskey.

_"Come by for a drink."_

_"Of what?"_

_"Anything you like."_

He'd taken up the, rather admittedly, human temptation that was her private number and then, nearly at the end of the week when all manner of family crisis had reached its absolute peak, that was when he decided to break and step away and, in a futile attempt to gain a better, more reasonable outsider perspective about his problems with Sherlock (though he would wisely refrain from talking about Eurus), he had taken out the damnable card and called her and, to his absolute detriment, she was eager to have him as a guest.

There was no reason not have that association, for Lady Elizabeth Alicia Smallwood had always retained a certain level of toughness and charm that he did appreciate, and there were times when their close association did veer towards the dangerous territory of friendly. Thus, to arrive at her stately, inner city condominium just after the dinner hour was not a visit that would incur suspicion, nor the careful way in which he conducted himself and pretended to be distracted by paperwork, which he brought with him as a ruse to fool his driver. And yes, as a matter of fact she was very elegantly dressed when she answered the door, the scent of Claire-de-la-Lune following her as she guided him into her living room with the usual idle chatter about her week off and how her plans to visit her daughter in Paris fell through, which irked her as she hadn't seen her in months and only earned sporadic phone calls. The condominium was tastefully decorated with proud pictures of her grown daughter on display on the mantelpiece, along with Alicia's own past glories as a champion gymnast and the accompanying awards she had won sharing space with ancestral Victorian portraits. In her prime, Alicia was shockingly beautiful. And with the way she held her head and gave him that smirking smile and handed him a glass of very fine brandy, he had to admit she was beautiful still.

What was it they talked about? Dull, little things, he recalled. Work was banished from conversation, so that left little to deeply discuss, and talk of Sherlock was a definite no go. The brandy was soothing, however, and he was surprised to find she had a sense of humour, the gradual idle banter between them easy and light, a marked change from his usual stance with other human beings. It left him feeling slightly off balance, a crooked sensation that he wasn't sure he wanted to aright.

"You seem comfortable," she'd said, and between the second (or was it third?) glass of brandy and her close proximity and her smirking, knowing smile, he definitely was.

"I am no stranger to leisure," he'd assured her, giving her a smile of his own. "Unlike my brother, who needs a constant whirlwind of activity to keep his brilliance occupied, I am perfectly content with quiet contemplation, to the point I seek that tranquility above all else."

She'd chuckled at this, and she was close to him on her large, Edwardian styled couch, her elbow touching his own, the tiny physical contact, accidental as it was, sending little sparks up and down his spine that ended in a hot sensation at the back of his neck.

"I think that is the goal of a lot more people than you realize. We're all looking for our little pocket of peace." Her hand moved, then, fingers trailing featherweight across his temple, teasing the fine line of his hair and sending his senses into a dizzying tailspin. He'd gulped the rest of his brandy, and she'd taken the empty glass from him with deft, elegantly adorned fingers that sparkled with jewels and ended in perfectly manicured pink nails. Shining and sharp and beautiful. When his lips met hers the world tipped and swayed, and he liked it, the feel of her warmth, the tender exploration of her tongue, the way their bodies wanted to melt against the other when arms wrapped tightly into a more intense embrace. That would have been fine, he could have stayed in that state of bliss forever, languidly enjoying the soft caresses and gentle moans their kisses sparked between them.

But she was a strong, determined woman who knew what she wanted, and Mycroft Holmes...

He downed the whiskey and tapped his fingertips at the bar, demanding another. The memory of her hands, eager and suddenly demanding, clutching at his belt buckle, sending wave after wave of desire through him, a heady distraction he had to break free from lest it all end in terrible disaster.

He'd hurt her, he knew. The look of utter dejection on her face when he pulled away and told her it was all a terrible mistake. Such a trite excuse, it was unforgivable. He'd snatched up his coat and umbrella and was too rattled to even think about calling his car as he fled. The worst part was that he hadn't wanted to, that ghastly section of him wanted to remain and see it all through to its undoubtedly terrible conclusion, to be the one hurt and not her. To be tossed out. Maybe she would have slapped him. Rejected, definitely. But he had chosen his pride, and now she was the one hurt, and the only solution to that problem he could think of at present was to drown.

"Whiskey only goes down that easy when you have a sorrow as a chaser. Is there any better accompaniment to disappointment? They say it dulls the senses, but don't believe it. Petty worries get pushed aside and it's real pain that finds focus. Are you having another? I'll have one with you. Troubles have magnetic properties. They stick and glob together, ugly things that they are."

The voice at his ear was female. Husky and tinged with alcohol. He was surprised to discover he was not alone at the bar any longer, and was now seated next to this muscular, slender woman with short, spiky, slightly curly hair and a dimple in her rather masculine chin. She had a strong jaw and was pretty in a determined, androgynous way. He had the oddest sensation that she was familiar to him, though he couldn't place her. The effect was accentuated by the careless way she wore a man's suit jacket, a thrift store remnant as were her jeans and black t-shirt, her feet encased in black Converse sneakers, the heels in frayed tatters. A poor fashion sense, like an elderly man had dressed her. She clinked her tumbler of whiskey against the rim of his own and took a swallow.

"You're too posh for this dump. I watched you come in, looking like the world just gave you a beating and you're trying to shrug it off." Her words were slightly slurred, and Mycroft got the impression this was a permanent fixture about her. She was an alcoholic, and an unapologetic one at that.

There were worse drinking companions, he reasoned, and he nodded as he took a sip of his whiskey, the liquid sending tendrils of warmth through him, though he was still chilled. "Your powers of observation are stellar," he said, and was surprised to discover his own voice was slightly slurred as well. He frowned over this detail before continuing. "I do, in fact, regularly have the problems of the world on my shoulders. But they do not weigh heavily upon me, that would require a sense of humanity, which I am wholly absolved from."

She gave him a cocky grin at this, head propped against the heel of her hand in amusement. "And how do you figure that?"

"It is a simple matter of deletion," he assured her, downing more of his drink, which was going down very easy indeed. "I do not partake of sentiment. It is not a part of my nature."

She laughed at this. "Oh, bullocks!"

"It's true," he said, frowning. Another drink and this one full, where did that one come from? "It became very evident to me at a young age that caring was not an advantage. Sentiment is for those on the losing side. I have very successfully navigated my way through the miasma of human suffering without being withered by it. My dear brother has assured me many a time that I do not possess a heart, and he is absolutely right in this. I have proof, you know. His close friend recently experienced the loss of his wife, and I am wholly unmoved by it. People die. I don't understand what is so difficult to understand about this. It's to be expected, and I see no purpose in the wallowing of it, nor in the tears and self destruction in association with it. All that we know and understand is temporary. Why bother lamenting that cruel fact?"

A warm hand met the back of his neck and he couldn't stop himself from leaning into it, and he did fully expect the person sitting next to him to mock him for his beliefs, and to insist why yes, of course you have a heart, you aren't a cowardly lion for God's sake. He would assure them, with all the cold of his Antarctic being, that this definitely was his ethos and they had best not bother with their sentimental, foolish arguments to try and sway him.

The face that was studying him was serious and concerned, two aspects that gave Mycroft pause.

"No one has any idea, do they?" she said.

Mycroft frowned. "Of what?"

"Of just how goddamned broken you are."

This was highly uncomfortable. The whiskey had left him light headed, but the chill, that damnable cold, it was unbearable, and he felt it again, that need to grab his umbrella and storm out, back into the rain and the muck, to somehow find his way to his grotto and hide there, and to stare hungrily into an empty fridge that was as empty as his own being.

Money was tossed onto the bar, and his umbrella was snatched up by surprisingly nimble hands before he had a chance to grab it. He felt himself staring dumbly at the woman who was now standing beside him, her head nodding and gesturing to the front door of the pub. "Come on," she said. "There's no point drowning yourself here, not when there's a much cheaper bottle of plonk upstairs. If you're lucky, my ex probably left us a meal to share, too."

"I have no intention of going anywhere." And he couldn't, really, the pub was spiralling now, and getting off of the stool proved difficult, but with her help he managed. And how was it he was being guided outside and then up a very long set of stairs to some incomprehensible height when he had most steadfastly asserted he wished to stay at the bar?

Time has an uncertain slippage when it's coated in whiskey, it seems. He was now in a flat, a not wholly unpleasant one, clean but with a broken tap at the sink that was replaced with a wrench, and a sad looking wooden kitchen table, another thrift store toss out, the surface littered with scratches and ink. Furniture was spare and worn, purely for function only. He saw an antique couch with the stuffing pouring out of its arm like a wound, decorative buttons missing. A decrepit parody of Lady Smallwood's lovely replica. There was an open bedroom door and an unmade bed. Grey sheets the same colour as his suit were in a tangle above the mattress.

Something fragrant and mouth watering was put in front of him and he was handed a fork, which he looked at in question. He was sitting again.

"We're in luck, she made us chicken tandoori. Must have snuck in and popped it along with a few others in the fridge when I went to the bank this morning. She has that habit. Creeping in like a little mouse, and leaving crumbs behind."

He glanced up at the woman staring down at him, her own plate in her hands as she dug into the food with her fork. Mycroft pushed his around his plate, his stomach doing terrible things and he wasn't sure it was all whiskey induced.

"Why am I here?"

"I think we all ask that question from time to time." He looked up at the woman who had sat with him at the bar, and she was giving him a crooked smile that was far more knowing than he liked. "Look, you're wasted. You obviously walked here, and you're soaked to the bone, so either you don't have money for a cab or you just don't care, both of these things equal I can't let you go out in that pouring piss without at least making an attempt to sober you up. Or get you drunker, whichever works best."

Mycroft poked his fork at the offering on his plate, which did look appetizing. He took a tentative bite and raised a brow at the careful blend of spices. Not bad. "Works best for whom, you or me?"

"You, of course," she said between bites. She stood with her hip leaning against the kitchen counter, regarding him with a far more sober focus than he had at present.

"And why would you want to do that?"

"I dunno. I like fixing broken things, I guess."

"I am not broken."

She shrugged over her plate. She had an aggressive appetite, Mycroft noted. Strong and aware of every bite. "It's been my experience that things usually get broken when they have been mishandled. Maybe they've been ignored, tossed aside, used excessively without upkeep." She poised her fork at her lips only to hesitate. "Things can break when they are weighed down too heavily, and you know what happens then? It gets tossed out. And it doesn't get replaced until there is a need to use it again. The cycle starts all over, and nothing truly gets fixed. The right tools never find their way in."

"I don't understand a word you are saying."

"Your heart got broke so it got tossed out and you haven't needed it again yet. Only no, not quite. It got so broken you figured you wouldn't bother replacing it. You'll just live with that empty hollow."

Mycroft pushed his now empty plate aside, the meal sitting ill within him. "I need to go."

He stood up and the mysterious, rather aggressive woman stood in front of him, as if she were daring him to push her out of the way. "It's just broke. That's all. You've patched it a bit, or tried to, here and there. Put a chunk of bitterness, here, and some anger over there, and a whole lot of deflection in this part, right in the middle. You've got plasters all over it, barely holding it in place." She pressed her fingers hard in the centre of his chest, guiding him further into her kitchen. "But it's still beating, isn't it, the stupid thing."

Mycroft was immobilized. He tossed his coat onto the chair in front of him, and couldn't help but remark to himself that the kitchen was, in fact, very warm. Delightfully so, even if he did feel dizzy and a little sick, this determined creature in his close proximity not allowing him his escape.

"I...Tried to join a colleague for drinks. At her home. It didn't go well. I don't socialize. I never see the need to. But I made that decision and I don't know why."

"Why wouldn't you?" she asked, watching him carefully. "You are a man."

Mycroft involuntarily bristled at this, not liking at all the way his stomach heaved and fluttered and not entirely because of the mixture of brandy, disappointment, self-loathing, whiskey and chicken tandoori swirling within it. "I have already told you I removed all aspects of sentiment..."

"A physical encounter doesn't have to have a heart attached, though it is significantly better when it does." She gave him a thoughtful once over. "Which you know to be true."

"I do not have that variety of need."

"Everyone does."

"Not me."

"You can't deny biology."

He really wanted to leave, he would reach into his coat and he would pick up his cell and he would call his driver and he would stagger into the back seat and if the man breathed one word, one word of where he'd found him he'd...

"How old were you, when you knew?"

Mycroft felt his mouth go dry. "When I knew what?"

"That things were different. That it wasn't as easy as being gay or being straight. That not even the sliding scale applied."

He stepped back, as though she was threatening him, and in a way she most definitely was. He took a deep intake of breath as she stood close to him, fingers tracing that bruising spot where she'd pressed them hard against his chest. "You have a younger brother."

"Who doesn't know," he quickly added.

She shrugged. "Why would he?"

"Because..."

"Why? You *are* a man."

"Yes," he said. Proudly. Yes. He was proud of that fact.

She slid close to him, her oddly muscular frame alluring, whiskey scented lips finding his and taking the pleasure she wanted from them. He surprised himself by returning it, becoming more urgent, his tongue and hers meeting in unexpected union. He enjoyed this touch, his body craved it, and he sank into the way she slid her hands around his waist and up his back beneath the damp of his suit jacket, holding his shivering flesh in her strong grip.

She was right. He did like this, even if they weren't the right hands, and she smelled like cheap booze and not pretty, sweet perfume.

She stroked the back of his head as she kissed him, words sensually tasted at the back of his tongue. "Did the serpent know what it was, when it whispered to Eve? We were never meant to be so different, forces outside of us made that happen. There's a snake biting your heart, filling it with its atrophied venom. You need to get an antidote. You need to let it soften, just a little bit, just give it a nudge, and let its plaster confines crack and allow the new growth to break through."

Her hands slid along his waist and fingers teased at his belt buckle. He grabbed her wrist, halting her from her search.

"You can't."

"Why?"

"You'll be disappointed."

"I doubt that very much."

"You won't find what you're looking for."

She grinned into his mouth, and he felt his heart quicken, his stomach flopping and lurching in terror as she slid her hand past the barrier of his belt and dove with bold strokes into his trousers.

He really was shaking now. She smiled into his mouth as she caressed bold circles across his mysterious centre, unbidden cries leaving him, an incoherence she had no wish to muffle with kisses.

"All the best treasures are hidden," she assured him.

They remained buried, Mycroft's reason warned him, even as it began to slip and lose its footing on the slick rocks of his senses, large waves battering against that place that hid all of his most precious, vulnerable points.

Climbing. And crashing.

Climbing. Crashing.

"What good is she if she was unwilling to do this for you?"

A universe swirled and ebbed its way on the forefront of his consciousness, hands bone white as he clutched the kitchen counter, every thought in his head insensible. He felt bewitched as she worked him, and it didn't matter, not at all, those fallacies he'd clung to as to why he had to be this way because, in the end, it was fear and it was this, he knew, he understood. It was fear his broken heart was made of most.

And then, a whiskey tainted question at his ear, kissed into it like a promise. "Why are you so sure she wouldn't have?"

He wept into her shoulder, his entire body electrified into randomly firing flames as her touch became unbearable. He was still reeling when her experiment ended, and her damp fingers trailed along his stomach, teasing the trembling muscles they found there. He felt like he was trapped on the ceiling, and it was with great difficulty he found his bearings, that he remembered he was in a strange woman's flat, one who drank excessively and whose ex brought her meals and whose perceptive kindness, he had to admit, had placed strange, awakening sparks within him.

Dishevelled and shakily breathless, he stepped away from her, and into her living room, alcohol and her touch no longer keeping its disorienting grip on his senses. Once again, he took in her tiny flat, comprised of a living room, bedroom and kitchen and somewhere hidden away, a bathing room that had to be the size of a closet. A rickety radiator hummed next to a chipped bookcase, so full of literary tomes it leaked a pile of additional books onto the floor in thick layers three volumes deep beside it. His body was still trembling in afterglow, a hurried rush he wished hadn't been quite so intense in delivery. And while she was fascinating in her own right, this stranger held no real sway over his life, he had no true understanding of her, nor she of him. His mind pictured the smirk of Lady Smallwood and the swirl of her brandy glass and the delicate elegance of her touch and yes, that he did long for, his heart thrumming for the steady, ongoing beat that was pleasant, knowing companionship.

He scanned the spines of the layers of books, stacked in haphazard order, Shakespeare sharing space with D.H. Lawrence, Jane Austen and Charles Bukowski wedged together, Beautiful Losers and Gormenghast. A small stack of folded papers on top of a Collected Works Of Lord Byron caught Mycroft's eye and he picked them up, shuffling through them with increasing question. Ignored checks, at least a dozen in all, and all in amounts that would allow a person living as humbly as she was to continue on for years.

"Yeah, those things," she said, shrugging. "I forgot to take them to the bank this morning. Went all the way to Whitechapel and everything."

"That's an awful lot of money to just forget about," he said, and she had no real answer for him. "I don't understand this...Who are you?"

"It's my publisher. Or Universal Studios. They're making a movie or some shit about me, I don't know. They keep sending me checks."

Curious now, he shuffled through the loose papers on her bookcase, discovering a literary magazine of some note buried amongst bills. Her picture, on the cover, and the bold headline, "Our Poet Laureate!"

He showed it to her. "What is this?"

She rolled her eyes as though embarrassed and turned away from him. "You're making me want coffee. A cruel thing to do a person running on whiskey. Don't know why they print that shit. I haven't written any odes to opening malls, lately."

He walked back into the kitchen, the literary magazine still in his grip. She filled the kettle and after gently nudging him aside, opened her fridge, revealing several neatly covered aluminium pans containing full meals and handwritten instructions on how to reheat each one. Mycroft's eyes widened, the method and precision of the dates, the wording on the reheating instructions, oddly flowery and philosophical ( _step 3: 'In every world you want to let things rest, as you should with this, My Love. Let it sit ten minutes. Keep the flavours calm. Calm, like you keep me.'_ ) the very ink used and the penmanship all painfully familiar.

"Eurus," he whispered to himself, taking one of the packages out. Homemade lasagna bolognese. He pulled a corner of the aluminium foil covering it and sniffed it. There was no mistaking her blend of herbs, this was her recipe.

His mad sister's recipe.

"Who?" the woman said, taking the aluminium packet from him and placing it back in the fridge. She took a small creamer out in its place, sweeteners and instant coffee already out on the counter. "Clara, my ex. She's the one who makes those. We were married, once, and she never seems to get the hint we aren't anymore. I don't bother correcting her, there's no point, not really." She chewed her bottom lip, not sure she was liking the way Mycroft was staring at her, like she was a bomb set to explode. "She's a bit mad, my Clara. Stabbed me once when she thought I was cheating and....Well, I was, but that doesn't justify attempted murder. Hopefully, she didn't notice me sneaking you up here, she lives on the ground floor now, can't stay away that one. You all right? You look a bit pale."

"Oh my God," Mycroft said, hand over his mouth in horror. "You're Harry Watson!"

"Well, yeah, that's the name on the bloody checks."

"You're Dr. John Watson's sister!"

"Don't tell me you're another one who reads that bloody blog of his. Him and his bestie, that detective twat. Sherlock Holmes. I'm glad they do good work and all and it's nice that John's got himself a life that's working for him, finally, but it really chuffs me how he's just opted me out of it, you know? Do you know he deletes my comments on his blog? I go to the library and read it on the public computers. Always bloody deletes me. I know what it's like, you know, being so uncomfortable for someone they just pretend you don't exist." She cocked her head to one side, giving Mycroft a concerned once over. "You okay? You look like you're going to faint dead away, like I've gone and ripped your soul out. I didn't mean to, if I have. It's a bad habit of mine, it really is, picking out all those crazy broken bits and making them float on the surface and I don't mean harm, I don't, but it does hurt, letting those pieces out to air. I'm a real pest like that, my brother will be the first to tell you. And if you can't get a hold of him, just ask Clara."

~*~  
It was past one in the morning when Mycroft arrived at his home, the events of the night a spiralling confusion that refused to coalesce into any semblance of sense. He'd met John's sister, he'd....had an *encounter* with John's sister. Harry Watson. Harry Watson, Poet Laureate of Jolly Olde England, Harry Watson, who had been married to Clara--a.k.a. Eurus, Sherlock and Mycroft's mad as a bloody hatter *sister*!  
  
Not good. Every measure of not good at all.

He had barely tossed his keys onto the sideboard at his front door when there was a knock behind him. Tired and sick and heedless of the danger that such an action currently entailed, he opened the door, fully expecting to find Eurus standing there with a butcher's knife, ready to plunge it into his non-heart. So he was quite surprised, but not at all relieved, to see Lady Smallwood there instead, her mouth a thin angry line as she pushed past him and into his home, slamming his front door behind her with a jab from her expensive high heels.

"Where have you been? I've been calling for hours! Avoiding me is not an option, Mycroft!" She slid off her coat and tossed it onto a nearby rack, one Mycroft hadn't had a chance yet to use. He slid his own soiled wool coat off carefully, hanging it up beside her dark one before following her with measured steps into his own home, its neat orderliness betraying how little time he actually spent here.  
  
She collapsed on his couch, wincing at how uncomfortable it was. "Don't just stand there, get a bottle of wine."

Mycroft blinked at this. "I'm sorry?"

"Honestly, Mycroft!" She really was angry, her arms crossed tight over her chest, her expression stern. "You truly believe I don't know!"

He stood, blindsided, in his own living room, trying to piece together exactly what Alicia was saying to him, for she could have been speaking in some form of archaic Cree for all the understanding he was managing to take from her. She knew what, exactly? Eurus...Harry Watson...John Watson...gourmet meals in aluminium packages...Clara...whiskey...

"I know you believe that most people are absolute morons and you are correct to assume so," she continued. "But I would like to think that you would have enough faith in your closest advisors, of which I am the main one, to be smart enough to know one or two of your most guarded, treasured secrets..."

Secrets. Yes. He was going to have to talk to Sherrinford right away, they had all clearly been played for quite some time and if any of them were to remain safe the breach would have to be maintained with the utmost of security. Level seven. At the very least.

"I will admit a certain arrogance in my assumptions of containment. The best course of action will be to put extra detail on both my brother and John Watson, and his sister, Harry, in order to..."

"What the hell are you talking about?"

He stared at her outrage and for one of the very few times in his life he was completely at a loss as to how to respond to her. No, she didn't know about Eurus, or the long game his mad sister had been playing or the fact that the free world was most definitely in jeopardy thanks to a drunken poet who lived above a crusty pub in a bad section of town and didn't even have enough sense to cash royalty checks. A drunk poet who a drunken Mycroft had tempted with his indulgent, selfish woes and lonely flesh.

"For fuck's sake, Mycroft, I know you weren't born a man!"

Mycroft choked a little on this. Ah, what was that, bubbling up in his breast? Some kind of feeling. Oh good, it's relief. That's a nice change.

He gave her a half smile at this, one that Lady Elizabeth Alicia Smallwood did not at all return.

"Wine, Mycroft."

"On its way," he assured her, and dove into his kitchen to fetch it.

~END~

 


End file.
